Into Wuding | Art Lessons through the Years

The Primary School Art Department ended the last semester with an art exhibition, themed ‘Beijing and Rome’. The show was designed to exhibit the various artistic techniques and forms of expression that students from different year groups had learned in their art classes. This theme aligned well with one of the school's priorities this year, which has been to foster an international perspective and cultivate the sense of being ‘global citizens with a Chinese heart’ among its students.

Year 5 created a radially-symmetric design inspired by Roman architecture. They divided into teams of two, working together on each artwork.   Each team had to find ways to bring its diverse ideas into alignment, in order to realise a single compact design. 

In a cross-curricular collaboration with EU,  Year 2 students were tasked with learning about the cave paintings of primitive peoples. By examining a variety of archaic cave paintings, the students were inspired to imagine what they themselves would have painted if translated back in time to the Stone Age. At the same time, they thought about the role of such paintings  as records of life. The concurrent EU curriculum orbited the theme of ‘Scavengers and Settlers’, and sought to familiarize students with the lifestyles, food, clothing, dwellings, and tools of people during the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages.

By studying the traditional art of Chinese painting, students cultivated their understanding of mindfulness. In this unit, Year 3 students learned a variety of Chinese brush and ink techniques. Alongside the appreciation and emulation of traditional Chinese artistic achievements, students also experimented with cross-cultural combinations of Chinese and Western themes and techniques.

Year 4 worked on developing their Chinese painting techniques through careful studies of the wisteria flower. Once students had practiced independently, they came together in a collaborative effort to design wisteria-themed murals for their houses. The flower paintings represented the houses across the four seasons.